Wal-Mart may be facing billions of dollars in legal damages due to a class action suit alleging gender discrimination over how their women employees are treated differently then men. The suit claims that women are paid less then men for the same jobs as well as receive fewer and have to wait longer for promotions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Readers,

I am sure that reading through our stories show that we Americans need and should make improvements. We here and BE HEARD BY AMERICA feel that together we really CAN make a DIFFERENCE! However, in order to make a real difference, we need to hear what our fellow Americans think… This site was created to be a collection of the public opinion so that we could stand together to make such changes. So, I urge you the readers, to comment on the articles you see as well as write articles yourself to voice such opinions. This site is for you and I urge you again to take full advantage of it! We will of course continue to share stories with you on the progress of America, good and bad… Please help us make this site a portal to help those in need!

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at beheardbyamerica@gmail.com . We look forward to hearing from our readers. Thank you for your patronage!

-The Be Heard By America Staff

The government increased pressure on health insurers on Thursday, saying some planned double-digit percentage increases while profiting billions and paying executives multimillion-dollar salaries.

A report by the Department of Health and Human Services said: “These massive increases are disturbing examples of the problems that make reforming our health insurance system more important than ever.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The amount of laid-off workers applying for unemployment increased last week after having decreased in the previous week. The jump lowered expectations about how fast the economy might improve this year.

The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for unemployment increased by 31,000 to 473,000.

Read the rest of this entry »

President Barack Obama is deploying his Cabinet across the nation in an effort to calm the public as Democrats head into midterm elections.

A weeklong push to highlight the stimulus program’s first year was beginning with a trip yesterday by Vice President Joe Biden to visit Michigan to tour a jobs training program and a solar factory that both received Recovery Act dollars.  Biden is expected to urge Congress to pass a jobs bill to aid some of the 8.4M people who have lost their jobs.

Obama’s Democrat colleagues planned to support programs employing people under the $787B spending bill.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was touring a medical center in Georgia on Tuesday; Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was advocating stimulus projects in Virgina and Texas.

In all, senior administration officials are supposed to visit 35 communities before Friday to counter GOP claims the program has failed.  Obama plans to surround himself in Washington today with people who are employed due to the plan, then move on to Colorado and Nevada.

Obama’s political team is convinced that the projects across the nation could help Democrats ward off encouraged Republicans and their efforts to reclaim majorities in Congress.  Although voters have soured on the spending, individual components have bipartisan fans.

The tax cuts Democrats included in their bill have the backing of 70% of the public, according to a CNN poll in January.  Another 80% support the infrastructure investments, such as the water projects Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson plans to promote in Ohio tomorrow.

Notwithstanding, 56% of the public opposes the basic plan, according to the poll.

Biden is expected to give Obama a report Wednesday assessing the stimulus’ effects.

cf http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_stimulus_defense

Swearing to America that “this is only the beginning,” President Barack Obama announced over $8B in federal loan guarantees Tuesday for the construction of the first nuclear power plant in the nation in nearly thirty years.

Obama called this both essential and politically advantageous as he tries to put more charge into his energy agenda.  Obama called for comprehensive energy law that assigns a cost to the pollution of fuels, giving utility companies more incentive to switch to nuclear power.

Read the rest of this entry »

While most of Washington is still snowed in, the Senate is briefly in session.

In fact, Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Chuck Grassley, R-IA, have released a draft for a bipartisan jobs bill.

The total cost is $85B and its long-term prospects, both with rank and file Republicans and later on with House liberals, are unclear.  But it is bipartisan and aimed at stimulating job creation.

Read the rest of this entry »

When President Obama appeared at the House GOP retreat recently, he singled out Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the raking Republican on the House Budget Committee, as a Republican with serious ideas, although he disagrees with many of them.

Ryan asked the president if he could support a proposal he’s worked on with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., for a line item veto.

Their proposal would be constitutional, Ryan said, keeping the “power of the purse” with Congress but giving the president the tool to pull out pork from legislation.

“It’s not going to solve our entire fiscal problem, but it kind of goes at the culture of spending, and it embarrasses a lot of the pork out of the budget,” Ryan said.  “If (Nebraska Democratic Sen.) Ben Nelson knew that the “Cornhusker Kickback” that he got for his state and only his state might have to be voted on independently later by his peers, he might not ask for it in the first place.  And, so that’s kind of the chilling effect on a lot of the waste and a lot of the deal cutting that’s going on around here that we think our deal will achieve.”

Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a tale of two unemployment crises.

Although the national unemployment rate dropped slightly last month to 9.7%, a new study suggests that not only have low-income workers been the hardest hit by the jobs crisis — but there has been “no labor maket recession for America’s affluent.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Customers of the largest banks in the country are the least likely to believe their financial institution does what’s best for them as opposed to what’s best for the bottom line, according to a report from Forrester Research.

Read the rest of this entry »